Peep Show
by Lady Jaida
Summary: Small Schuldig past-fic, involving Berlin, some German vulgarity, and a woman of questionable occupation. R&R.


Schuldig past-fic, involving Berlin, peep shows, and a woman of questionable profession. R&R.  
**Peep Show**  
  
Well, he likes the basic idea of it.  
  
He likes the great big glaring lights once you step inside the door. He likes the chicks, not wearing too much, with their puffy lips and the curves of their breasts showing. He likes their legs and their wrists. He likes the squalor, the splendor in the squalor. He likes the smell and the taste of sex, so strong and so potent even his dulled senses can pick up, can wallow in it. He likes the lewd looks. He likes the perverts, the old men and the young men and the in-between men come here for the turn-on of too-young girls. He likes how fucking pure the pleasure is, if not the intent. He likes that he's too young for this just like the girls are but he gets in, no problem. He likes that. He likes the basic idea of it, an amalgam of the streets and the privacy of what goes on behind closed doors.   
  
He sits down and puts one long hand on his own thigh and he looks through the glass, foggy. The girl slides herself in, a blonde with puffy lips that curve up.   
  
"Liebling," she says, her lips moving as she settles herself down. His lips curve up and he leans back a little. Hair falls into his narrow eyes.   
  
"Möse," he returns, and it's as affectionate as that voice gets. God, the language is hard and square and boxy. It works well with where they are. She snorts, though, she doesn't like being talked to that way by a fucking kid. The bright lights are harsh on her young face. In five years, if some asshole doesn't kill her before then, she will be an old woman, and he knows it. It makes him laugh a little. He's in a good mood.   
  
She tells him she hasn't seen him in a while.   
  
"Ich habe es satt," he explains lazily.   
  
She asks him if he's sick of her? How could he be sick of her? He just smiles and shrugs and waves a hand to tell her to get on with it. He's a fourteen year old kid and he likes to jack off, every fourteen year old kid likes to jack off and he's no exception. This is a place for jacking off. He closes his eyes and everything crashes in on him, everyone in the goddamn place who's jacking off moves into his head and it feels good. There's gotta be something about the streets of Berlin that feels good and this is it. The whores know what they're doing. The younger girls don't know what they're doing as much but they're young and it's a fucking turn on, too. He lights up a cigarette and watches her move. She's gotta be three years older than him. Four, maybe. He's known her for a few months now and he looks at her with scorn and she looks at him like he's a kid and they're both right. Hell, at least he pays good money. And hell, at least she has nice breasts. He doesn't complain when a bitch has nice breasts.   
  
His mother had nice breasts but he didn't look at them this way. And he's starting to forget them - not them, but how he looked at them - so it doesn't do to bring them up, anyway. Shit, not here. It's offensive. You don't think about your fucking mother in a place like this. You think about the blonde bitch with the deep blue eye makeup and the nondescript color of her eyes. You think about her thick lashes, her tongue on her lips. You don't think about anything else.   
  
Her name is Frieda. His mother.   
  
_Her_ name is Malia. She's as German as the next bitch, and what a bitch she is, but she's good with names. She named him, anyway. In the end. In the beginning.   
  
_It was one cold fucking night. They stamped their feet and their breath smelled like hot smoke on the air. They smoked in the cold, stamped their feet. The smoke came out their nostrils. Stamping their feet, they smoked. Everything was frozen. In time, not in the tangibility, the reality. Everything was so smoky, and their feet were cold. They parted their lips to blow smoke out their lips and their faces pulled back that way. It took a long time for their faces to move back the way they had been. Shit, that's how you know a winter is cold.   
  
It was one cold fucking night.   
  
At least the cold masked the smells. And it made the night dark. They stamped their feet and smoked. She had this fake fur thing on around her neck. She'd found it in a dumpster outside of some rich bitch's house. And she looked like some sort of Goddess of destruction. She always wore that blue eye makeup. It was Berlin and she was Berlin. The way it was so cold and she was stamping her feet against the cold but she was wearing fake fur and half her breasts were showing to the cold. She was so cold her nipples were hard. He laughed to himself. You could laugh when you had no name. In the cold. Stamping your feet, blowing smoke through your lips.   
  
The neon was refreshing and bright. The colors sliced through the cold like a knife in between somebody's ribs. She was Berlin, man. She was Berlin. The way she held herself and what she really was: that was Berlin. She was a whore who held herself like God. Jesus Christ, he thought, now that's Berlin. And he hated Berlin. He hated her. But she had nice breasts and her eyes had this color to them in the neon.   
  
"Gottes Wege sind unergründlich," she told him. He told her there was no God. And there wasn't. There may have been many small gods but there was no one God. And if there is he's a real fucking asshole, let me tell you that, he told her. He smoked. Blew the smoke out flaring nostrils. His nose was long and his nostrils were made for flaring like that. She asked him what his name was. They'd just met. She had nice breasts.   
  
He told her he didn't have a name.   
  
She told him everybody had to have a name. But he liked things better when he didn't have a name. Okay. He had a name. His mother named him but he'd never liked it. What a fucking name. Aurel. Aurel Reich. He didn't go by that name anymore so he just told the whore he didn't have a name. It was a real simple procedure. She looked him up and down. He looked older than he was but younger than he was at the same time. She grinned like a real wolf. Like some scrappy dog of the streets who rooted through garbage for food but still moved like she owned the whole fucking world and all its garbage piled up to make her a throne.   
  
So she asked him why he was here. He told her it was 'cause he was too guilty as sin to be anyplace else, he guessed, to much of a fucking problem.   
  
"Schuldig?" she repeated. He'd always liked the sound of that fucking word.   
  
"Ja," he said, "Schuldig."   
  
She told him that at least he wasn't a hypocrite and then she told him a guy couldn't go through life not having a name. She asked him how he liked the name Schuldig and he told her it was just fucking fine. She said, isn't it real nice. Catchy, too. So it stuck, like a fly on flypaper or semen on the bedsheets or something. It just made sense. At least it wasn't Aurel Reich.   
  
"Schuldig," she said again. It was always nice, she told him later, who the hell to cry out to when you orgasmed. He laughed. He loved the sound of his own laugh. Though it sounded different: now that he had a name.   
  
The night was one fucking cold night, he would tell you. When people chose to bring up God he told them he was baptized by a girl who worked at a fucking peep show in Berlin. He'd tell them later, he didn't remember the name of the peep show. That wasn't the name that was important. Berlin was important. The girl was not important. The name was only as important as he chose it to be. God was only as important as the people believing in him and hell, they were one stupid fucking bunch. Baptism. If you could do it on the streets of Berlin with a peep show girl, who the hell needed the church? Berlin wasn't about the church. Schuldig wasn't about the church. Schuldig wasn't about Berlin. Schuldig was about himself. It was just the name.   
  
The name stuck._   
  



End file.
